midnight
Howard , especially , had always had a fine and critical taste regarding art matters , and now , among the works of artists of whom he knew something , was a valuable member of the little coterie , and often appealed to when Mr. Sumner was absent . And thus they had talked over and over again the impressions which each artist and his work made on them , until even Mr. Sumner was astonished and delighted at the evident result of the interest he had awakened . But the chief man and artist they were now considering , was Michael Angelo ; and the more they learned of him the more true it was , they thought , that he `` filled all Florence . '' They eagerly followed every step of his life from the time when , a young lad , he entered Ghirlandajo 's studio , until he was brought to Florence -- a dead old man , concealed in a bale of merchandise , because the authorities refused permission to his friends to take his body from Rome -- and was buried at midnight in Santa Croce . They tried to imagine his life during the four years which he spent in the Medici Palace , now Palazzo Riccardi , under the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent , while he was studying with the same tremendous energy that marked all his life , going almost daily to the Brancacci Chapel to learn from Masaccio 's frescoes , and plunging into the subject of anatomy more like a devotee than a student . They learned of his visit to Rome , where , before he was twenty-five years old , he sculptured the grand _ Pietá _ , or _ Dead Christ _ , which is still in St. Peter 's ; and of his return to Florence , where he foresaw his _ David _ in the shapeless block of marble , and gained permission of the commissioners to hew it out , -- the David which stood so long under the shadow of old gray Palazzo Vecchio , but is now in the Academy . Then came the beginnings of his painting ; and they saw the _ Holy Family _ of the Uffizi Gallery -- his only finished easel picture -- which possesses more of the qualities of sculpture than painting ; and read about his competition with Leonardo da Vinci when he prepared the famous _ Cartoon of Pisa _ , now known to the world only by fragmentary copies .