The contract concludes: "And I, Jacopo Gallo,
promise to his Most Reverend Monsignore that the said Michael Angelo will
finish the said work within one year, and that it shall be the most
beautiful work in marble which Rome to-day can show, and that no master of
our days shall be able to produce a better. And similarly I promise the
said Michael Angelo that the Most Reverend Cardinal will disburse the
payments as written above; and in good faith, I, Jacopo Gallo, have made
the present writing with my own hand, according to date of year, month,
and day, as above."(76)
Jacopo's boast and promise were justified, for even now there is no finer
complete work of sculpture in the whole of Rome than the Pieta at St.
Peter's. It is said that Michael Angelo overheard certain Lombards ascribe
the Pieta to their own sculptor, Cristoforo Solari, called "Il Gobbo." He
therefore carved his name upon the belt of the Madonna's robe. He never
signed any other work. Nothing closes the great period of the fifteenth
century so fitly as the Pieta of Michael Angelo, prophesying at the same
time the power of the art of the sixteenth.
CHAPTER III
THE DAVID AND THE CARTOON OF PISA
Family affairs recalled Michael Angelo to Florence in the spring of 1501.
He returned full of honours gained in Rome, and took up his position as
the first sculptor of the day. His next commission came from Cardinal
Francesco Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius III.
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