56 The Slaves, now in the Louvre, Paris.
57 The ox, in Italian banter, appears to have taken the position of the
ass with us in England, as a dull, heavy beast, a fool. Michael
Angelo's answer was, as it were: "It is according to the asses you
mean; if it be these asses of Bolognese doubtless they are much
bigger; if ours of Florence they are much smaller. You are bigger
asses in Bologna than we are in Florence."
58 Piero Torrigiano gave his version of the affair to Benvenuto Cellini
long afterwards: "This Buonarroti and I used, when we were boys, to
go into the Church of the Carmine to learn drawing from the Chapel
of Masaccio. It was Buonarroti's habit to banter all who were
drawing there, and one day, when he was annoying me, I got more
angry than usual, and, clenching my fist, I gave him such a blow on
the nose that I felt bone and cartilage go down like biscuit beneath
my knuckles; and this mark of mine he will carry with him to his
grave." Cellini adds--"These words begat in me such hatred of the man
since I was always gazing at the masterpieces of the divine Michael
Angelo, that, although I felt a wish to go with him to England, I
now could never bear the sight of him."
Torrigiano worked for Henry VIII. of England in Henry VII. chapel,
Westminster, and at Hampton Court. Afterwards he went to Spain and
came to a bad end there, as Condivi says.
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