[79] Michael Angelo had finished more than three-fourths of the work, when the Pontiff visited the Chapel, and on inspection, turning to Messer Biagio, of Cesena, then master of ceremonies, in his train, asked him what he thought of the work? The scrupulous prelate replied, that so daring an aggregate of shameless nudities in a sacred place was obscene profanation, and an exhibition fitter for a tavern or a brothel than a papal chapel. Michael Angelo, indignant, and eager to revenge the affront, only waited for his departure, and then, from memory, drew him in the character of Dante's Minos, with a snake encircling his body and gnawing his middle, in the midst of a hillock of fiends. In vain did Messer Biagio supplicate the Pontiff and Michael Angelo to take him out; he remained, and is there still. So far Vasari; but tradition adds, that on Biagio's application, the Pope asked in what part of the picture he was placed, and being answered, in Hell, replied, had you been lodged in Purgatory, you might perhaps have been dismissed, "sed ex Inferno nulla est redemptio." Condivi notices the story not at all. In the Diary of Paris de' Grassi, Messer Biagio is said to have been appointed master of ceremonies by Leo X. 1518, in the room of Nicola da Viterbo, and, if we believe Ducange, (Table des Auteurs dans le Supplement du Glossaire,) he has written a diary himself.--See Fiorillo, i. p. 389. [80] Blaise de Vigenere, the translator of Philostratus and Callistratus, tells us, in his observations on the latter, page 855, that "he saw M. Angelo, at the age of sixty, strike off more marble from a block in one quarter of an hour, than four stonemasons usually did in three or four hours." If this happened in 1550, as will appear from the following passage, M. Angelo was then in his seventy-sixth year.--"L'entrepris aussi de Michel l'Ange estoit hautaine et fort hardie, sentant bien sa main assurée, le quel commança l'an 1550, que j'estois à Rome, un Crucifiement où il y avoit de dix à douze personnages, non pas moindres que le naturel, le tout d'une seule pièce de marbre, qui était un chapiteau de l'une de ces huict grandes colomnes du temple de la Paix de Vespasian, dont il s'en void encore une toute entière et debout, mais la mort----" [81] Vol. vi. p. 272. [82] Vasari's account of both pictures is sufficiently curious to be communicated in his own words. "Alfonso D'Avalo, Marchese del Guasto, having obtained from Michael Angelo, by means of Frà Nicolo della Magna, a cartoon of Christ appearing to Magdalen in the Garden, made every exertion to have it executed in painting by Puntormo, as he had been told by Michael Angelo that no one could serve him better. Jacopo undertook the work, and succeeded to a degree of excellence, which made Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the Florentine guards, bespeak a second copy of him, which he placed in his house at Cività di Castello."