The form of the
mouths, and the expression and shape of the heads, especially in the
second angel on the right, are similar to the work of Buggiardini as seen
in Florence, Milan, and the Cathedral of Pisa. Buggiardini is the only one
of the assistants who seems to have reaped any benefit, beyond their
wages, from the work they did for the great master. This trouble with his
assistants was not the only difficulty that Michael Angelo had to contend
with in the execution of his work. Vasari says that he shut himself alone
in the chapel, without any one to help him even in the grinding of his
colours; but, as he adds, that he took great precautions to prevent the
workmen informing the public as to what he was doing, we must assume that
Vasari was repeating a fable that had grown up about the marvellous work
forty years after it was executed, much as we might at this day repeat
stories of the making of the Wellington Monument by Alfred Stevens. The
carpenters and plasterers Michael Angelo employed would soon learn to
perform the more mechanical part of his work, such as laying the intonaco,
pricking the cartoons, and grinding colours, and as they could not have
inserted into the work any tradition contrary to the new manner of the
artist, would be preferred by him to second-rate artist assistants; no
doubt, too, the boy he employed in household work would be made to help.
The trouble he had in his household arrangements before the time of his
trusted servant, Urbino, may be illustrated by a letter relating to the
boy he got from Florence about this time.
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