Michael Angelo accepted it, and extracted the above-mentioned statue without adding any other piece at all, so exactly to size that the old surface of the outsides of the marble may be seen on the top of the head and in the base.

He has left the same roughnesses in other of his works, as that statue for the tomb of Pope Julius II., which represents Contemplative Life.

This is the custom of great masters, lords of their art.

But in the Giant it is more wonderful than ever, because, besides not adding any pieces, he amended the faults of the roughing out, an impossible or, at least, a most difficult thing to do (as Michael Angelo himself has said).

He received four hundred ducats for this work, and finished it in eighteen months.
XXII.