Messer Ottaviano de' Medici had requested Giuliano to paint him a portrait of M. Angelo. He obtained the consent of M. Angelo: having held him between chat and work two hours at the first sitting--for M. Angelo delighted to hear him talk--Giuliano got up, and said, "M. Angelo, if you want to see yourself, rise: I have settled the character of the face." M. Angelo rose, looked at the portrait, and said, smiling, "What the devil (che diavolo) have you been doing? you have clapt one of the eyes into one of the temples--look to it." Giuliano having for some time looked silently at the portrait, and the sitter, resolutely replied, "I do not see what you said; but take your place, and I'll give another glance at nature." M. Angelo, who knew where the defect lay, sat down again sneering; and Giuliano, having eyed repeatedly now the picture and now M. Angelo, at last rose and said, "It appears to me that the thing is as I have drawn it, and that nature shows it so." "Oh, then it is a defect of nature!" replied Michael Angelo, "go on and prosper in your work." Francesco Granacci, the companion of his early studies, and Jacopo, called L'Indaco, the enlivener of his solitude, enjoyed the same degree of his familiarity; but as the real basis of friendship is equality, and mutual esteem founded on similarity of character and powers, attachments merely formed by early habits or congenial humour between men too dissimilar else to admit of comparison, never can aspire to its privileges and name. Condescension is not always delicate, and the indiscretions of simplicity sooner or later provoke the pride, contempt, and arrogance of superior powers. Giuliano, Granacci, and L'Indaco, experienced all three from Michael Angelo; they were among his conscripts for assisting in the frescoes of the Capella; but finding their pigmy capacities unequal to his colossal style, he not only, in lofty silence, destroyed what they had begun, but barring all access to the Chapel and himself, forced them to return, vainly grumbling, to Florence. FOOTNOTES: [62] 1433--1527. They underwent three banishments in less than a century. [63] 1472--1492. Most splendid period of Florence this. [64] Nardi Storia, lib. 1. Bernardo Rucellai de Bello Italico, Lond. 1733, 4to. p. 52. Pauli Jovii Histor. sui temporis, lib. 1. Memoires de Philippe de Comines, l. vii. c. 9. [65] Vasari, Vita di B. Bandinelli, Ed. del Bottari, t. ii. p. 576; e Vita del Torrigiano, t. ii. p. 75. [66] Nardi, Storia di Firenze, lib. ii. Vasari, Vita di Frà Bartolomeo; but chiefly the Life of Savonarola, by Burlamachi, inserted in Balusii Miscell. ed. Mansi, t. i. p. 558, &c. [67] Giovanni dalle Carniole, a celebrated engraver on stone, was an adherent of Savonarola; there is a portrait of that reformer by him, on a cornelian of uncommon size, in the Museo Flor. with this inscription, Hieronymus Ferrariensis Ord. Præd. Propheta Vir et Martyr.