LX. Now to return to anatomy. He gave up dissection because it turned his
stomach so that he could neither eat nor drink with benefit. It is very
true that he did not give up until he was so learned and rich in such
knowledge that he often had in his mind the wish to write, for the sake of
sculptors and painters, a treatise on the movements of the human body, its
aspect, and concerning the bones, with an ingenious theory of his own,
devised after long practice. He would have done it had he not mistrusted
his powers, lest they should not suffice to treat with dignity and grace
of such a subject, like one practised in the sciences and in rhetoric. I
know well that when he reads Alberto Duro he finds him very weak, seeing
in his own mind how much more beautiful and useful his own conception
would be. To tell the truth, Alberto only treats of the proportions and
diversities of the body, for which one cannot make fixed rules, making
figures as regular as posts; and what matters more, says nothing of human
movements and gestures. And because Michael Angelo has now reached a ripe
old age, he thinks of putting his ideas in writing and giving them to the
world. With great devotion he has explained everything minutely to me; he
also conferred with Messer Realdo Colombo, an anatomist and most excellent
surgeon, a great friend of Michael Angelo's and mine. He sent to Michael
Angelo for study the body of a Moor, a very fine young man, and very
suitable to the purpose; he was sent to Santa Agata, where I then lived
and still live, as it is a quiet place.
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