your body. As long as you are young, things will go fairly smoothly; but when you are no longer so, sicknesses and infirmities, which have had their origin in that bad and wretched life, will make their appearance. Avoid poverty, live with moderation, mind you do not stand in need of necessaries, and beware of excess of work."[1]
But counsel was ever without avail: never would he consent to treat himself in a more humane manner. A little bread and wine sufficed to nourish him. Barely a few hours were devoted to sleep. When at Bologna, occupied with the bronze statue of Julius II., he had only one bed for himself and his three assistants.[2] He lay down to rest fully dressed and booted. On one occasion his legs swelled so much that his boots had to be cut, and in removing them the skin of his limbs came with them.
As a result of this terrible life he was, as his father had prophesied, constantly ill. We find fourteen to fifteen serious illnesses mentioned in his letters.[3] More than once
- ↑ Some advice concerning hygiene, which shows the barbarousness of the times, follows. "Above all, take care of your head, keep yourself moderately warm, and never wash yourself. Have yourself cleaned, and never wash yourself." (Letters of December 19, 1500.)
- ↑ Letters, 1506.
- ↑ In September 1517, at the time he was working on the façade of San Lorenzo and the statue of Christ, in the Church of S. Maria Sopra Minerva, in Rome, he was "sick unto death." In the following year and in the same month, when at the Seravezza quarries, he fell ill through overwork and worry. He had a fresh illness in 1520, at the time of the death of Raphael. At the end of 1521, a friend, Leonardo Sellajo, congratulated him "on recovering from an illness from which few recover." In June 1531, after the capture of Florence, he could neither sleep nor eat: his head and heart were ailing; and he continued in this state until the end of the year, until his friends concluded
