was a student in the garden of Lorenzo^ with the artists above named; he was by nature of an excessively choleric and haughty disposition; powerful and robust in person, he was so violent and overbearing, that he was perpetually offending his fellow students, to whom he not unfrequently offered outrage in deed, as well as word.[1] The principal vocation of Torrigiano was that of the sculptor, but he also worked extremely well in terra-cotta, his manner being good and his works usually very beautiful. But he could never endure that any other should surpass himself, and often set himself to spoil with his hands such of the works of his fellow students as he perceived to display a degree of excellence to which he could not attain, when, if those whom he thus attacked resented the injury, he would often assail them further, and that with something harder than words. He had an especial hatred to Michael Angelo, but for no other reason than because he saw him to be studiously devoted to his art, and knew that by night and on all holidays, he secretly occupied himself with drawing in his own room, by which means he produced better works in the garden than any other student, and was accordingly much favoured by Lorenzo.
Moved by a bitter and cruel envy therefore, Torrigiano was constantly seeking to offend Michael Angelo, both in word and deed, insomuch that they one day came to blows, when Torrigiano struck Michael Angelo on the nose with his fist, using such terrible violence, and crushing that feature in such a manner that the proper form could never be restored to it, and Michael Angelo had his nose flattened by that blow all his life.[2] This circumstance having been made known to
- ↑ Cellini, who knew Torrigiano many years later, after the return of the latter from England namely, describes him thus:—“This man was a magnificent figure, and of a most audacious deportment; he had the look of a huge trooper rather than of a sculptor, more especially when one observed his violent gestures and heard bis sounding voice; he had a way of knitting his brow that was enough to frighten all who beheld him, and was for ever discoursing of his deeds of bravery,” &c., &c.
- ↑ Torrigiano himself described this affair to Cellini, but in terms calculated to give a different turn to the matter, relating it thus “This Buonarroti and I, when we were children, w'ent together to the church of the Carmine to learn our art in the chapel of Masaccio. But Michael Angelo had the habit of bantering and tormenting all who studied there
