Fattucci wrote to say that the Pope wished a colossal statue to be erected on the piazza of San Lorenzo, opposite the Stufa Palace.

The giant was to top the roof of the Medician Palace, with its face turned in that direction and its back to the house of Luigi della Stufa.

Being so huge it would have to be constructed of separate pieces fitted together.

This project, evidently intended as a truly Florentine insult to the house of Stufa, did not please Michael Angelo, and his letter, of October 1525, in reply is an instance of his heavy, elephantine humour:-- [Image #37] LORENZO DE MEDICI, DUKE OF URBINO THE NEW SACRISTY, SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE (_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_) "_To my dear friend_ MESSERE GIOVAN FRANCESCO, _priest of Saint Mary of the Flower of Florence, in Rome._ "MESSER GIOVAN FRANCESCO,--If I had as much strength as I have had pleasure from your last letter, I should expect to carry out, and that quickly, all the things you write to me about, but as I have not I will do what I can.
"About the colossus of forty braccia, of which you tell me, that is to go, or rather to be erected, at the corner of the loggia of the Medician garden, opposite the corner of Messer Luigi della Stufa, I have thought of it not a little, as you told me, and it seems to me that it would not do in that corner, for it would take up too much of the roadway; but in the other corner, where the barber's shop is, it would turn out much better according to my way of thinking, because it has the piazza in front of it and would not be so much in the way; and perhaps as they would not allow the shop to be removed, for love of the income from it, I have been thinking that the said figure might be in a sitting position, and the seat high, the said work to be hollow within, as is right when working in pieces, so that the barber's shop would come underneath, and the rent would not be lost.

And again, so that the said shop may have wherewithal to dispose of its smoke as it has now, it occurred to me to give the said statue a horn of plenty in its hand, hollow within, which would serve for the chimney.