Michael Angelo, like all young artists who have had the opportunity, drew
and studied in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of the Carmine,
containing the frescoes of Masaccio and his followers; the result of these
studies may be seen in some of the compositions, and especially in the
draperies of the Sistine ceiling. There are two pen-drawings in Vienna
that show us the sort of work Michael Angelo did at this time: one
represents a kneeling figure, evidently from a picture by Pesellino; the
other, two standing figures, that might be after Ghirlandaio. The
draperies have been specially studied. Another pen-drawing, in the Louvre,
is a careful study from Giotto's fresco of the Resurrection of St. John in
the Cappella Peruzzi at Santa Croce.
A gloom was cast over all Italy by the death of Lorenzo de' Medici on
April 8, 1492. Michael Angelo lost his best friend and returned to his
father's house; here he worked upon a statue of Hercules that stood in the
Strozzi Palace until the siege of Florence in 1530, when Giovanni Battista
della Palla bought it and sent it into France as a present to the French
King. It is lost.
In the year 1495, whilst living with Aldovrandi at Bologna, as Condivi
tells us, Michael Angelo, for the sum of thirty ducats, completed the
drapery of a San Petronio, begun by Nicolo di Bari on the arca or shrine
of San Domenico, and carved the very beautiful and highly finished
statuette of an angel holding a candlestick, still to be seen there.
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