The work,
Cupid or Apollo, at Kensington, is not so finely finished as the other
statues of this first Roman period; the head is like a copy of the head of
the David, the division between the pectoral muscles is weak, and their
attachments to the breast-bone are round, regular, and without
distinction, very different from either the naturalism of the Bacchus, the
delicate truth of the Pieta, or the dignified abstraction of the David,
done very shortly afterwards. This work at Kensington was discovered some
fifty years ago in the cellars of the Gualfonda (Rucellai) Gardens by
Professor Miliarini and the sculptor Santarelli. The left arm was broken,
the right hand damaged, and the hair unfinished, as may be seen to-day;
Santarelli restored the arm. The statue is like the work of a poor
imitator. A work by Michael Angelo may easily have been destroyed in
troublous times, but can never have been lost and forgotten. He has always
had lovers in every age; unlike the primitives and the quattrocentisti, he
has never been out of fashion.
Whilst Michael Angelo was working away in Rome he was much troubled by
family affairs in Florence. After the expulsion of the Medici in 1495,
Lodovico lost his post at the Customs, and his three younger sons appear
to have been put into trade. Buonarroto, who was the only sensible one
left at home, and dearly loved by Michael Angelo, was born in 1477; he was
sent to serve in the Strozzi cloth warehouse in the Porta Rossa.
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