Turbulent Tales

"Gianluca Sforza-Riario, the fair youth in yellow, led a burst of laughter, which drew the attention of other clients thronging the long pillared gallery. "You were well-advised, Messer Buonarroti, to come to Rome. Here you will certainly succeed. No artistic reticence will restrain you from bawling your wares in the market-place, and here success comes to him who bawls loudest, thus imposing upon the vulgar, undiscriminating herd. Oh, you will find men enough in Rome who, to their shame, are growing fat on art. The patronage of the ignorant enriches them. So may it fare with you, good sir." Still the young artist kept his temper, though his hands might itch. "Sir, it is possible that you mistake my quality. It happens that until now I have had no patron but one, and he was not a man whom any could call ignorant—Lorenzo, the great Lorenzo de' Medici. Had he lived, I should never have left Florence." "Lorenzo de' Medici." Gianluca's eyebrows rose until they almost joined the yellow thatch above his shallow brow. "You will not tell me that Lorenzo de' Medici knew anything of art?" Young Buonarroti gasped for breath. "How, sir?""Ser Michelangelo, it is my desire to think well of you; but if you praise me the artistic perceptions of Duke Lorenzo you will render that impossible. A man of crude taste, leaning to the meretricious, to . . . to trivial things designed to trap the senses of . . . of just such men." That was but the beginning. Continuing, the aesthetic Messer Gianluca delivered himself at great length and in the choicest terms of an address upon art, under which young Michelangelo felt himself grow faint with wonder…" "Turbulent Tales" is collection of short stories by the Italian-English Writer Rafael Sabatini.